Can't connect to my wireless home network?

[Nate Nagel]

Hi all,

been having PC trouble in waves lately... not sure why... anyway, here's
the current saga. I can not connect one of my PC's to my home network.
Here's the whole story...

OK, first, I had a problem with a mouse driver that I posted here about
earlier. I ended up just "fixing" it myself by imaging a clean HDD that
I had laying around for the exact same computer (I'd bought it for parts
when I needed a screen backlight, and later a keyboard) and reinstalling
all my apps and then moving my documents back over. At the same time I
turned it into a dual boot w/ Linux. That part of it works fine,
although that took me the better part of a day to accomplish, and I
wouldn't have bothered had I not had both a clean install and a spare
250GB HDD laying around.

At the same time, I also purchased another used laptop because I
realized how down-spec mine was, and esp. having a EIDE HDD and limited
memory upgrade capability that would make future upgrades
difficult/expensive/pointless. That "new" computer is running WinXP Pro
and was working fine until today (of course, I've only had it since
Saturday morning, but still.) So I've had two computers running
simultaneously since Saturday, as well as the girl's desktop. All were
good up until today.

Today, I left work early because of a bad head cold and sat down to
check my email and found that my wireless router had bricked itself
sometime between breakfast and 3 PM. Old router was a Netgear something
or other. Tried everything, it's a brick, power light doesn't even come
on. So much for taking it easy! So I ran out and bought a new wireless
router, essentially the same spec but this time Cisco/Linksys.
Installed it and used the same SSID and key as the old network so as not
to have to reconfigure the various computers - with one exception. I
misremembered the encryption type and set it to WPA initially and then
realized my error when the computer wouldn't connect. Rather than
setting it to WEP, I thought I might as well just change the various PCs
to WPA instead - after all, there's only three in the house (although
one is running two different OS's) - so I changed the new laptop, my old
laptop's Linux system, and then went upstairs to change the girl's
antique Sony desktop, when I found that there was no WPA option on her
computer. Which is odd, because she's running XP SP3 just like me. So
then I go back and change everything back to WEP, and everything is all
fine and happy again - EXCEPT THE NEW LAPTOP. (the desktop, and both
the Linux and XP OS's on the old laptop are connecting fine.) Which is
even more odd because that's the computer that I used to configure said
router. I get a pop up at the bottom of the screen that says "Windows
was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network (network
name)" and if I keep the Wireless Network Connection window open it's
hung on "Validating Identity" - neither of which item I've ever seen before.

Anyone have any explanation and/or fix for this?

Keep in mind that this laptop was coexisting happily with the old router
all weekend, this is something new that's occurred since installing the
new router, although other PC's that I didn't mess with at all are
connected to it and talking (as evidenced by my ability to send this post.)

thanks,

Nate

 

[Nate Nagel]

Hi all,

been having PC trouble in waves lately... not sure why... anyway, here's
the current saga. I can not connect one of my PC's to my home network.
Here's the whole story...

OK, first, I had a problem with a mouse driver that I posted here about
earlier. I ended up just "fixing" it myself by imaging a clean HDD that
I had laying around for the exact same computer (I'd bought it for parts
when I needed a screen backlight, and later a keyboard) and reinstalling
all my apps and then moving my documents back over. At the same time I
turned it into a dual boot w/ Linux. That part of it works fine,
although that took me the better part of a day to accomplish, and I
wouldn't have bothered had I not had both a clean install and a spare
250GB HDD laying around.

At the same time, I also purchased another used laptop because I
realized how down-spec mine was, and esp. having a EIDE HDD and limited
memory upgrade capability that would make future upgrades
difficult/expensive/pointless. That "new" computer is running WinXP Pro
and was working fine until today (of course, I've only had it since
Saturday morning, but still.) So I've had two computers running
simultaneously since Saturday, as well as the girl's desktop. All were
good up until today.

Today, I left work early because of a bad head cold and sat down to
check my email and found that my wireless router had bricked itself
sometime between breakfast and 3 PM. Old router was a Netgear something
or other. Tried everything, it's a brick, power light doesn't even come
on. So much for taking it easy! So I ran out and bought a new wireless
router, essentially the same spec but this time Cisco/Linksys. Installed
it and used the same SSID and key as the old network so as not to have
to reconfigure the various computers - with one exception. I
misremembered the encryption type and set it to WPA initially and then
realized my error when the computer wouldn't connect. Rather than
setting it to WEP, I thought I might as well just change the various PCs
to WPA instead - after all, there's only three in the house (although
one is running two different OS's) - so I changed the new laptop, my old
laptop's Linux system, and then went upstairs to change the girl's
antique Sony desktop, when I found that there was no WPA option on her
computer. Which is odd, because she's running XP SP3 just like me. So
then I go back and change everything back to WEP, and everything is all
fine and happy again - EXCEPT THE NEW LAPTOP. (the desktop, and both the
Linux and XP OS's on the old laptop are connecting fine.) Which is even
more odd because that's the computer that I used to configure said
router. I get a pop up at the bottom of the screen that says "Windows
was unable to find a certificate to log you on to the network (network
name)" and if I keep the Wireless Network Connection window open it's
hung on "Validating Identity" - neither of which item I've ever seen
before.

Anyone have any explanation and/or fix for this?

Keep in mind that this laptop was coexisting happily with the old router
all weekend, this is something new that's occurred since installing the
new router, although other PC's that I didn't mess with at all are
connected to it and talking (as evidenced by my ability to send this post.)

thanks,

Nate

Y'know what? Never mind, I figured it out. Don't you love how just as
soon as you tell the world that you've got a problem that you can't
solve, that five minutes later you think of something that you haven't
tried yet, even though you swore ten minutes earlier that you'd tried
everything possible?

Anyway, for posterity's sake, here's what worked.

I thought to myself, "self, why don't you just delete that connection
completely from your PC, and then let it reconnect to the network,
you'll type in the key, and all will be all bueno." Of course, that
didn't work.

What *did* work was going to the "view wireless connections" window,
manually disconnecting from my network, going to the "change order of
preferred networks" menu, then editing that particular connection -
which I'd done ten times before to no avail. HOWEVER... on the second
tab, which is "authentication," there's an "enable IEEE something or
other authentication" (no, I'm not going to run back upstairs and get
the exact wording; I'm posting from my old laptop in my basement
hidey-hole under the stairs, while the new laptop is in the living room
next to the router, because the router has to be above ground for me to
get a wireless signal out in the garage) check box which has never been
checked on any of my PCs before, but somehow got checked on this one
(possibly when I inadvertantly switched it to WPA and then back to WEP?)

so that's that. All three PCs and four OSs are happily connected again,
although my wallet is a little lighter and I'm not real happy that my
Netgear router didn't even last four years before shitting the bed. And
if I hadn't horked up configuring the new router, it would have been
seamless...

Nate